The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

KAUFMAN Dating the Language of the Palestinian Targums 129
Before summarizing, it is important to point out that most of the
types of variations that we have seen here are also attested within
Qumran texts themselves, or between Qumran and the Masoretic Text
for both Hebrew and Aramaic texts. More work is needed in this area.
Permit me to conclude, then, with the following observations:
1. The Palestinian Targum cannot be dated as early as Qumran,
because in addition to kinds of differences enumerated above (i.e.
where the PT shares features with the Cairo Genizah side of the TL
text), the Palestinian Targum has numerous and regular distinctive
grammatical and lexical differences that point to a later period, for
example:
a) infinitives 'piopo (peal) and n^apn (derived stems), vs. ^Bpn
and n^copN and the like;
b) ]3- suffix of the Icp, vs. ]-;
c) -3 imperfect prefix of Ics, vs. -N;
d) «rn 'I was', vs. rnn.
On the other hand, nothing within the text traditions of the
Palestinian Targums demonstrate that there was never a single
Palestinian Targum text. We can and must reconstruct 'the' Palestinian
Targum, as I have argued in my monographic joint article with
Y. Maori. 23
2. Onqelos/Jonathan should be seen as a systematically modified
version of an earlier common Targum (a common base shared with
the Palestinian Targum)—a text subsequently modified using a distinctive
set of characteristic changes such as those illustrated above.
3. Regarding Pseudo-Jonathan and the nature of LJLA: many of the
(specifically biblical Aramaic-like) features we have extracted as characteristic
of LJLA are undoubtedly due to the fact that Pseudo-
Jonathan is, after all, a biblical text, and would have been subject to
the same kind of 'biblicizing' we have demonstrated above for the
Genizah Levi text; therefore, such forms must be ignored when
comparing Pseudo-Jonathan with earlier materials. When we do that,
we see that the Palestinian text underlying Pseudo-Jonathan is little
different from the rest of the witnesses to the Palestinian Targum. But
it is also not the case that those parts of Pseudo-Jonathan that reflect
23. S.A. Kaufman and Y. Maori, The Targumim to Exodus 20: Reconstructing
the Palestinian Targum', in Textus: Studies of the Hebrew University Bible Project,
16 (ed. M. Goshen-Gottstein; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991), pp. 13-78.